This is the first of two talks I gave at the Building A New World Conference , which was held at Radford University in Virginia. Due to time constraints, I was unable to give my full presentation. That can be read below if you are so-inclined…

Last month, Barack Obama appeared on Fox News for an interview. At one point he was asked to name a hot-button issue where he’d be willing to buck the Democratic Party line. His answer was on regulation, explaining that he agreed with the Republican Party when it came to markets and the notion that you let businesses figure out the solutions to things like pollution. He then gave the example of a cap and trade system to fight global warming, saying “its a smarter way of controlling pollution than dictating every single rule that a company has to abide by.”

Now that’s a pretty weak answer coming from the supposedly liberal candidate, as well as something that would make climate scientists want to pound their heads against a wall. A few years ago, renowned British scientist James Lovelock made a biting analogy when asked what he thought of the way politicians were handling the threat of climate change. He said: “I find a marked similarity between attitudes over 60 years ago and those now towards the threat of global [climate] change. Our response so far is just like that in 1938, an attempt to appease… with politicians out to show that they do respond but in reality are bidding for time.”

Coincidentally, President Bush used this same appeasement analogy last week to describe Barack Obama’s stated willingness to meet with foreign adversaries. The difference being, though, that Lovelock’s usage was not a right wing slander tactic, but rather, a simple observational truth.

As award-winning environmental journalist Ross Gelbspan explained in his book Boiling Point, “[Emissions trading] assumes that nature will accommodate our economic system. It will not. There is no way that a market-based system can accomplish a global transition to clean energy. We cannot finesse nature with accounting tricks.”

So, the important thing to talk about then is what we can do to accommodate nature, not appease it. And how do we accommodate nature? Well, in scientific terms, carbon dioxide levels need to be reduced from 385 ppm in the atmosphere–which is where we’re currently at–to at most 350 ppm. This benchmark was recently determined by the world’s leading climatologist Dr. James Hansen of NASA, who was the first to report to Congress on global warming back in the mid 1980’s. Incidentally, it was around that time when we passed the 350 ppm level. But the real kicker, according to Hansen, is that we need to reach 350 in pretty much the next ten years to avoid what he calls “catastrophic climate change.”

Now, if left strictly in the hands of politicians, that seems like an almost impossible task. For years, we were under the delusion that as long as we stayed under 500 ppm, things would be fine. But in the face of the rapid melting of the arctic and other climate events, like Katrina, scientists, like Dr. Hansen, have been forced to reduce that benchmark to 350ppm. Yet Governments around the world continue to operate as though we’ve got room to play with. That’s why their climate change policies always talk about cutting emissions to 1990 levels by 2050 or 2075. They think we just need to slow up a little. When, in reality, we need to rewind.

Business is the driving force behind the thinking that we still have room to play with. And perhaps their biggest trick has been to convince those of us who care about the environment that all we need to do is to buy eco-friendly products. Now there’s nothing wrong with driving an energy efficient car or installing electricity-saving appliances or buying local produce. These are all great things and it’s a mindset we should all adopt. But if that’s the only way to save the planet, then we truly are screwed.

Not only would an American/western culture dependent on consumerism, transportation, and 24/7 access to an unlimited amount of energy need to make that transition, but so would the entire developing world, which is aspiring toward our lifestyle. That would be impossible to accomplish in 10 years. As a long-term goal, I think it’s greatly important. But we need to focus on what can make the most difference in the next 10 years. And that’s what I’d like to begin talking about now.

Every year, 54 percent of American tax dollars gets funneled to the single largest consumer of oil in the world: The Pentagon. The official figure is 320,000 barrels of oil per day, but that only includes vehicle transport and facility maintenance. As journalist Don Fitz pointed out in an extremely informative article on this subject published last year, “That figure does not include energy for manufacture of vehicles, energy for building and dismantling military facilities, energy for construction of roads, and energy consumed while rebuilding whatever the military blows up. Nor does it factor in energy required by the military’s partners, NASA and the nuclear industry. Additionally, whenever war or construction razes trees, it eliminates their ability to remove CO2 from the atmosphere.”

Even so, that 320,000 barrels of oil per day is still more than most countries. Actually, there are only 35 countries that consume more oil than the US military.

Now, here’s the really interesting thing, and I have to again quote Mr. Fitz on this because he said it best, “The military is the only sector of the economy where emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) can be reduced by greater than 100%. This is because militarism is the only type of activity whose primary purpose is destruction.”

This is a hugely important observation that every environmentalist and antiwar activist must incorporate into his or her arguments. Think about it. When a road gets bombed out or a hospital is leveled in Afghanistan or Iraq, energy has been spent, not only on the weaponry and the transportation of that weaponry, but also on the rebuilding and treatment of the seriously injured. Yet, none of this has to happen in the first place.

Worse yet is that the military pervades every part of our culture. By some estimates, it is now connected to roughly 50 percent of all economic activity in the US. That’s not hard to imagine. According to Nick Turse, the author the new book “The Complex: How the military invades our everyday lives,” the Pentagon’s payroll is a veritable who’s who of the top companies in the world. The list includes names you’d expect like IBM; Time-Warner; Ford and General Motors; Microsoft; NBC and General Electric; as well as names you wouldn’t, like Sara Lee; Nestlé; M&M Mars and Hershey.

No wonder so much of our tax money is going to the Pentagon. According to Chalmers Johnson, Spending for the US military establishment during the current fiscal year of 2008 is conservatively calculated to be at least $1.1 trillion. This is larger than all other military budgets of the world combined. The supplementary budget, which pays for the two ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and is only a small portion of all military spending, is still greater than the next two highest defense spending countries combined, Russia and China.

Meanwhile, investment in renewable energy and conservation amounts to only hundredths of a penny of the federal income tax dollar. Imagine how quickly we could reduce greenhouse gas emissions if instead of funding the largest consumer of oil in the world, we started funding clean energy solutions. That’s like killing two birds with one stone.

Right now, the US Department of Energy is saying that solar thermal power plants covering a 100-mile-square area of the Southwest— equivalent to 9 percent the size of Nevada—could generate enough electricity to power the entire nation. The only caveat is the expense. No official estimates seem to exist, but it’s hard to imagine it costing more than the $3 trillion-plus dollars that the Iraq war is projected to cost.

And speaking of Iraq–wars like that would no longer be necessary. Even John McCain has said as much, when he talked about freeing America of its dependence on foreign oil. The one problem with no longer needing oil, though, is that it could easily exacerbate the perceptions in the Middle East that the United States is antagonistic to the Muslim world. It would also increase the chance of anti-US terrorism by intensifying poverty in a region so dependent on its oil exports. But that doesn’t have to be a problem, if, as part of our withdrawal from the region, we pay reparations in the form of clean energy technology and give aide to newer, more sustainable industries that could take the place of oil. Such a goodwill gesture could almost entirely reverse the animosity that is pushing more young people in that region toward violence.

I realize the idea of shrinking The Pentagon seems just as improbable as Americans suddenly becoming green consumers, but would it be so hard to imagine our defense budget being even half of what it is now? That would still be more than what any other country spends. It’s simply ridiculous that no major candidate for president has discussed reducing military spending. In fact, Barack Obama, perhaps the one you’d least expect, has actually talked about increasing it. If the left is going to make him their candidate, then they must absolutely push him to go the other way on defense spending. And, we may also need to consider war tax resistance, as there has perhaps never been a more appropriate time.

But, let’s remain positive, let’s assume 10 years from now we have dramatically reduced the size of the military, and thereby weakened the US addiction to oil, conquered terrorism and instability in the Middle East, and rebuilt the US energy infrastructure to run on clean energy–all of which, then encourages the rest of the world to follow suit. What more can we be doing to reach that 350ppm?

Well, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization the livestock industry is “one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems at every scale.” And most notably, it accounts for 18 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, which is more than all the cars, trucks, buses and planes on the planet.

Worse yet, the FAO is predicting that the demand for meat will more than double by 2050. The problem, however, isn’t just in the digestive processes of these animals. While it’s true that the methane produced by their excrement is a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, we must yet again figure in the amount of fossil fuel needed to run machinery, provide for animals and irrigate crops.

When you take in the whole scope, you find that the typical US meat-eater is responsible for nearly 1.5 tons more carbon dioxide per person every year than a vegan. That’s how much of a difference a change in diet can make on the environment. But we can’t forget the number of other positive changes it makes.

For starters, Americans eat 10 times more meat than is healthy. There is no doubt this is directly related to the successful lobbying efforts of the livestock industry on capital hill. As food journalist Michael Pollan details in his book The Omnivore’s Dilemma, in 1977 a Senate Select Committee on Nutrition, headed by Geoarge McGovern, held hearings on chronic diseases linked to diet and prepared what by all rights should have been an uncontroversial document called “Dietary Goals for the United States.” The committee had advised Americans to actually quote “reduce consumption of meat,” but discovered the final version had been changed to “Choose meats, poultry and fish that will reduce saturated-fat intake.”

Had the original wording been left intact, we might be a much healthier nation, with far fewer cases of heart disease and less on the brink of climate disaster.

And, in terms of the global picture, if everyone moved to a plant-based diet, less people would die of hunger and dehydration. The livestock industry uses massive amounts of water and land–a good deal of it was once Amazon forest. As for this country, almost half the water and roughly 70 percent of the grains grown go to feed animals, who eventually become food, but feed far fewer people than the grain itself would feed. It also takes ten times the fossil fuels to produce a calorie of animal food as it does to produce plant food. Therefore, eating lower on the food chain is one of the best ways to reduce environmental impact and increase the global food supply.

And, just to reiterate, if we were to dramatically reduce our meat consumption, we could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 18 percent, live healthier longer lives, and spread the wealth of food and water to those who do not have it.

I hope the trend is becoming clear by now, that every little bit we do to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the present (not by like 2050, as so many politicians frame their proposals), gives us an even greater return, beyond simply preventing climate change. It helps solve so many of the other problems we’ve gathered this weekend to talk about. We may go from panel to panel, subject to subject, and get the impression that there are a hundred fronts to this battle we’re fighting for a new world, but really they’re all connected. If we can focus our efforts on the two areas I’ve discussed, we will cut out, by far, the two greatest polluters, and free up money and resources to not only create a clean energy revolution, but a much more politically stable, well-fed, and healthier rest of the world that can embrace it as well.